pose upon cotton-not upon justice-and who imagine this great question can be put aside, because a few hundred Irish spinners are gaining a morsel of bread by the overflowing industry of the English market.

But what right have you to continue these rules, Sir, these laws of exclusion? What necessity can you show for it? Is the reigning monarch a concealed Catholic? - Is his successor an open one? Is there a disputed succession? Is there a Catholic pretender? If some of these circumstances are said to have justified the introduction, and others the continuation, of these measures, why does not the disappearance of all these circumstances justify the repeal of the restrictions? If you must be unjust-if it is a luxury you cannot live without reserve your injustice for the weak, and not for the strong-persecute the Unitarians, muzzle the Ranters, be unjust to a few thousand sectaries, not to six millions- galvanise a frog, don't galvanise a tiger.

If you go into a parsonage-house in the country, Mr. Archdeacon, you see sometimes a style and fashion of furniture which does very well for us, but which has had its day in London. It is seen in London no more; it is banished to the provinces; from the gentleman's houses of the provinces these pieces of furniture, as soon as they are discovered to be unfashionable, descend to the farm-houses, then to cottages, then to the faggotheap, then to the dunghill. As it is with furniture so it is with arguments. I hear at country meetings many arguments against the Catholics which are never heard in London; their London existence is over— they are only to be met with in the provinces, and there they are fast hastening down, with clumsy chairs and illfashioned sofas, to another order of men. But, Sir, as they are not yet gone where I am sure they are going, I shall endeavour to point out their defects, and to accelerate their descent.

Many gentlemen now assembled at the Tiger Inn, at Beverley, believe that the Catholics do not keep faith with heretics; these gentlemen ought to know that Mr. Pitt put this very question to six of the leading Catholic

Universities in Europe. He inquired of them whether this tenet did or did not constitute any part of the Catholic faith. The question received from these Universities the most decided negative; they denied that such doctrine formed any part of the creed of Catholics. Such doctrine, Sir, is denied upon oath, in the bill now pending in Parliament, a copy of which I hold in my hand. The denial of such a doctrine upon oath is the only means by which a Catholic can relieve himself from his present incapacities. If a Catholic, therefore, Sir, will not take the oath, he is not relieved, and remains where you wish him to remain; if he do take the oath, you are safe from this peril; if he have no scruple about oaths, of what consequence is it whether this bill passes, the very object of which is to relieve him from oaths? Look at the fact, Sir. Do the Protestant Cantons of Switzerland, living under the same state with the Catholic Cantons, complain that no faith is kept with heretics? Do not the Catholics and Protestants in the kingdom of the Netherlands meet in one common Parliament? Could they pursue a common purpose, have common friends, and common enemies, if there were a shadow of truth in this doctrine imputed to the Catholics? The religious affairs of this last kingdom are managed with the strictest impartiality to both sects; ten Catholics and ten Protestants (gentlemen need not look so much surprised to hear it) positively meet together, Sir, in the same room. They constitute what is called the religious committee for the kingdom of the Netherlands, and so extremely desirous are they of preserving the strictest impartiality, that they have chosen a Jew for their secretary. Their conduct has been unimpeachable and unimpeached; the two sects are at peace with each other; and the doctrine, that no faith is kept with heretics, would, I assure you, be very little credited at Amsterdam or the Hague, cities as essentially Protestant as the town of Beverley.

Wretched is our condition, and still more wretched the condition of Ireland, if the Catholic does not respect his oath. He serves on grand and petty juries in both

countries; we trust our lives, our liberties, and our properties, to his conscientious reverence of an oath, and yet, when it suits the purposes of party to bring forth this argument, we say he has no respect for oaths. The right to a landed estate of 3000l. per annum was decided last week, in York, by a jury, the foreman of which was a Catholic; does any human being harbour a thought, that this gentleman, whom we all know and respect, would, under any circumstances, have thought more lightly of the obligation of an oath than his Protestant brethren of the box? We all disbelieve these arguments of Mr. A. the Catholic, and of Mr. B. the Catholic; but we believe them of Catholics in general, of the abstract Catholics, of the Catholic of the Tiger Inn, at Beverley, the formidable unknown Catholic, that is so apt to haunt our clerical meetings.

I observe that some gentlemen who argue this question are very bold about other offices, but very jealous lest Catholic gentlemen should become justices of the peace. If this jealousy be justifiable any where, it is justifiable in Ireland, where some of the best and most respectable magistrates are Catholics.

It is not true that the Roman Catholic religion is what it was. I meet that assertion with a plump denial. The Pope does not dethrone kings, nor give away kingdoms, does not extort money, has given up, in some instances, the nomination of bishops to Catholic Princes, in some I believe to Protestant Princes: Protestant worship is now carried on at Rome. In the Low Countries, the seat of the Duke of Alva's cruelties, the Catholic tolerates the Protestant, and sits with him in the same Parliament - the same in Hungary — the same in France. The first use which even the Spanish people made of their ephemeral liberty was to destroy the Inquisition. It was destroyed also by the mob of Portugal. I am so far from thinking the Catholic not to be more tolerant than he was, that I am much afraid the English, who gave the first lesson of toleration to mankind, will very soon have a great deal to learn from their pupils.

Some men quarrel with the Catholics, because their language was violent in the Association; but a groan or two, Sir, after two hundred years of incessant tyranny, may surely be forgiven. A few warm phrases to compensate the legal massacre of a million of Irishmen are not unworthy of our pardon. All this hardly deserves the eternal incapacity of holding civil offices. Then they quarrel with the Bible Society; in other words, they vindicate that ancient tenet of their Church, that the Scriptures are not to be left to the unguided judgment of the laity. The objection to Catholics is, that they did what Catholics ought to do- and do not many prelates of our Church object to the Bible Society, and contend that the Scriptures ought not to be circulated without the comment of the Prayer Book and the Articles? If they are right, the Catholics are not wrong; and if the Catholics are wrong, they are in such good company, that we ought to respect their

errors.

Why not pay their clergy? the Presbyterian clergy in the north of Ireland are paid by the state: the Catholic clergy of Canada are provided for: the priests of the Hindoos are, I believe, in some of their temples, paid by the Company. You must surely admit, that the Catholic religion (the religion of two thirds of Europe) is better than no religion. I do not regret that the Irish are under the dominion of the priests. I am glad that so savage a people as the lower orders of Irish are under the dominion of their priests; for it is a step gained to place such beings under any influence, and the clergy are always the first civilizers of mankind. The Irish are deserted by their natural aristocracy, and I should wish to make their priesthood respectable in their appearance, and easy in their circumstances. A government provision has produced the most important changes in the opinions of the Presbyterian clergy of the north of Ireland, and has changed them from levellers and Jacobins into reasonable men; it would not fail to improve most materially the political opinions of the Catholic priests. This cannot, however, be done,

without the emancipation of the laity. No priest would dare to accept a salary from Government, unless this preliminary were settled. I am aware it would give to Government a tremendous power in that country; but I must choose the least of two evils. The great point, as the physicians say, in some diseases, is to resist the tendency to death. The great object of our day is to prevent the loss of Ireland, and the consequent ruin of England; to obviate the tendency to death; we will first keep the patient alive, and then dispute about his diet and his medicine.

Suppose a law were passed, that no clergyman, who had ever held a living in the East Riding, could be made a bishop. Many gentlemen here (who have no hopes of ever being removed from their parishes) would feel the restriction of the law as a considerable degradation. We should soon be pointed at as a lower order of clergymen. It would not be long before the common people would find some fortunate epithet for us, and it would not be long either before we should observe in our brethren of the north and west an air of superiority, which would aggravate not a little the justice of the privation. Every man feels the insults thrown upon his caste; the insulted party falls lower, every body else becomes higher. There are heart-burnings and recollections. Peace flies from that land. The volume of Parliamentary evidence I have brought here is loaded. with the testimony of witnesses of all ranks and occupations, stating to the House of Commons the undoubted effects produced upon the lower order of Catholics by these disqualifying laws, and the lively interest they take in their removal. I have seventeen quotations, Sir, from this evidence, and am ready to give any gentleman my references; but I forbear to read them, from compassion to my reverend brethren, who have trotted many miles to vote against the Pope, and who will trot back in the dark, if I attempt to throw additional light upon the subject.

I have, also, Sir, a high-spirited class of gentlemen to deal with, who will do nothing from fear, who admit the